Date:         Mon, 3 Jun 2002 15:37:02 -0400
Reply-To:     Derek Drew <derekdrew@RCN.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Derek Drew <derekdrew@RCN.COM>
Subject:      About My Coolant Heater At 40 Below Zero
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

I m not an active member of the list, but my brother Derek Drew forwarded
your question to me. I had a Webasto coolant heater installed in my 87
Syncro Westy two years ago. The little control panel for it on my dashboard
is identical to the little control panel that appears in one of the
photographs in my manual evidence that it is the same heater installed by
VW in some markets.

I bought the heater from Ark Mirvis (I think his e-mail address is
heaterman.net, and his Web site is easy to find with a google search).
Dennis Haynes installed it.  Your questions:
1) Without the engine running:
How long does it take before you can get warm air blowing?

ANSWER: It all depends on how cold it is outside, because the device heats
up the coolant to a certain temperature before it starts blowing warm air
inside the vehicle. At 30 degrees below zero (I live in Fairbanks, Alaska),
I ran (there s a reason for the past tense; I ll explain below) the Webasto
for about half an hour at the end of my work day and then found the car
warming up inside. The thing has a timer so you  can set it to fire up on
its own at two different times of the day. I never took my  coat off for
the short ride to wherever I was going next, so I can t say it got toasty,
but there was definite warmth. I was not cold.

How warm does the air blow?

ANSWER: Again, this is all relative to how cold it is outside. I did some
testing of the Webasto at a  campground when it was about 20 or 30 degrees
out, and quite a gush of warm air came out. I even had the top up, so of
course a lot of the warmth was going right out the canvas, but down below
it was markedly warmer.

I never actually gauged the temperature, so I don t know if this is much
help. My basic message is: The Webasto works! And in extreme cold, it
wonderfully babies the engine up to a starting temperature. One sound you
never want to hear is that of your camper s engine doing a cold start at 40
below zero.

That brings me to the reason for the past tense. This winter was colder
here than last winter, and somewhere around 40  below, the Webasto simply
stopped firing up. Forty below is the temperature at which absolutely ALL
moisture freezes and also seems to  be the temperature at which weird
things start happening to other materials. The current, but not definitive,
diagnosis is that there was a tiny bit of moisture in the device, and in
the extreme cold somehow the electronics got ruined. Right now my Webasto
is disconnected. I hope to find someone here who can figure this out for sure.

Also keep in mind two other possible drawbacks: 1) It s a little noisy,
although I found that I couldn t care less about the noise when I wanted to
get warm. 2) It s set to only run for an hour at a time (I don t know if
this can be changed). 3) I would be nervous about sleeping with it on
because of possible carbon monoxide, but of course with the timer you can
set it to start up well before you have to exit your sleeping bag.

Good luck. Feel free to e-mail me with more questions. lisadrew@aol.com